


Laden

by posingasme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Burns, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, conversion therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-12 06:50:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20560031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/posingasme/pseuds/posingasme
Summary: If Dean won’t help him burn these feelings out of him, Sam will just have to do it himself.





	1. Fix

The most afraid Sam had ever been in his life had been that day Dean had given up pretending. It had been excruciating. Sam had trouble following the conversation because of the blood pressure taunting his ears. 

“What did you…?”

Dean had sighed at him. “Dude. Come on. Wouldn’t it be easier if we both just quit the game?”

“What-what are you saying?”

Green eyes rolled, and Dean shrugged with his hands. “Or we could keep doing what we always do. Pretend. Go through the motions. What should we pretend today?”

Sam swallowed. “Why? What’s this about?” He wasn’t forming clear thoughts. His mind was racing, but nothing coherent was coming to his rescue. 

“You asked me about girls. Talking to girls.”

“Yeah. Amy.” He was beginning to tremble. “I’m thinking of-of asking her out.”

His brother shook his head at him. “Really? Why?” For some reason, Dean sounded very tired suddenly. 

“Why?” Sam’s voice was beginning to sound shrill. He cleared his throat and tried to lower it. “Don’t you think she’s pretty?”

“Sammy...I’m gonna ask you again. Why do you keep pretending? It’s me. We’re alone. You don’t have to keep doing that. It’s just me.”

“Doing what?” Sam exploded. “Getting advice about asking a girl out? What’s wrong with that?”

Dean stared up at the sky for a moment, as though he were fighting his temper. “Sam, stop. Just stop, okay? If we’re around other people, fine. But you don’t have to do it with me. Okay?”

Their boots were wet with mud, and sweat and rain poured down their necks. They continued to trudge onward, through the loose rocks and over the sprawling roots. But it wasn’t the cold that was making Sam’s teeth chatter. 

“You never have to do it with me, okay? Pretend. You don’t have to with me. Just...just remember that, okay?”

The moment they made it to the cabin, Sam flew into his bedroom, and didn’t say another word to Dean the rest of the night. 

It was nearly three years before he actually came out to his brother. Dean had simply rolled his eyes. “Yeah? Shocking. So what now? Am I supposed to throw you a party or something?”

Sam’s eyes burned with unshed tears. “What? No! I don’t want you to celebrate it! I want you to help me make it stop!”

It looked like Dean had just been slapped. “What?”

“I’ve tried on my own. It won’t stop! So I researched, because...because…”

“Because you’re a nerd, and it’s what you do,” Dean supplied helpfully. 

“Because...Yeah, okay, that. And I found some articles about-about aversion therapy.”

Dean’s eyes went cold. “You mean conversion therapy.”

“It’s supposed to-to help me associate, you know, things with pain.”

“That shit should be illegal! It is illegal in some places!”

Sam frowned at him. “How do you know anything about it?”

“It was on Oprah.”

He stared. “You watch Oprah?”

Dean blinked a few times, then threw his hands up. “That’s not the point! The point is that I’m not helping to hurt my kid brother so he can be less gay! That’s bullshit!”

The tears were coming, but he held them back with stubborn anger as long as he could. “Either you help me or I’ll do it myself. But I’m not living like this.”

“I’m not helping you hurt yourself. Maybe we should tell Dad-“

Sam took an involuntary step back. “You aren’t telling Dad anything. I’m seventeen. I’m not a child. And I’m not going to let you tell Dad I’m gay, because I’m not going to be. I’m going to make it stop. If you tell Dad, I’ll never speak to you again. I’ll never forgive you.”

His brother was getting red in the face, and his fists clenched at his sides. “Sammy, this is stupid.”

“You wouldn’t think so if it were you.”

“What are you going to do? Huh?”

Sam swallowed hard. “That’s what I wanted help figuring out. But I’ll just research some more. Forget I said anything. I won’t ask you to help me ever again.” With that, he stormed out of the motel room, and slammed the door behind him. Tears gushed down his cheeks as he ran blindly for the gas stop across the lot. He tried to bring himself under control, listened to his father’s voice in his head, telling him crying fixed nothing, that tears were a waste, a sign of weakness someone or something could take advantage of. There was no room for weakness in their world. 

By the time he opened the door, his eyes were dry, and he tried not to know they were still pink. He let his hair hide them somewhat, ducked his head whenever he saw someone glancing at him. 

His Bowie knife would serve his purpose, if necessary, but he wanted something which would not cause noticeable marks. He had spent an obsessive amount of time thinking of how best to create the aversion to the feelings he had. Dean and Dad were going away tomorrow, to check out something Dad’s buddy Caleb had found, and that was his chance. 

In the end, he bought himself lighter fluid and shoved it into his coat. Easy enough to hide, and easy enough to explain if he needed to. 

Dean watched him unceasingly until the moment John was ready to go. But there was nothing he could do when John nodded at the door. 

“Sammy, you stay quiet, get some research done. We’ll call you when we know what Caleb’s found. But in the meantime…”

“Lore about creatures with yellow eyes. I know.”

John nodded. He patted the young man on the back, and pushed Dean ahead of him out the door. Dean gave him a glare of warning before the door closed between them. 

Sam sighed. “Sorry, big brother,” he murmured. “I know you mean well, but I gotta do what I can to get this out of me. With or without your help.”


	2. Scar

The burns healed quickly. They were indistinguishable from any other injury he took on hunts. But the scars were there, in his mind and in his heart. Long after he had given up the experiment, he continued to feel the effects of having tried to burn a part of him out. 

The promised outcome had failed, but there was a definite difference. Now, whenever he caught himself thinking of a man, craving a man, a severe sting of shame hit his stomach and groin, and remembered pain scorched his skin. Sometimes it was enough to kill his want and leave him nauseated. Sometimes he lay awake at night, able to quell neither his lonely hunger nor his cruel burn, and he gave in and obeyed them both. A large, trembling hand touched him, and he let the burns blaze inside him, but he kept moving that hand along his flesh even as it seared his shame in deeper. Even as tears filled his eyes. 

He prayed every night. He had for a long time now. Punishing himself had not worked. So he asked God to send an angel to do it for him. 

Dean watched him sometimes, and Sam could feel him wondering, but the older man left it alone. And then Sam was gone, and they spent over two years apart, and Sam hoped he had forgotten. 

He loved Jessica. He truly had. She would always be his first love. But he had not been able to make love to her. Had she known? Would she have married him anyway? He would never be sure. He had loved her, but touching her was difficult in a way it shouldn’t have been. She had accepted it as just part of him, his cautious hesitation, and had seemed to assume things would be different one day. Sam knew better. She was beautiful and sexy and confident, and everything he should have wanted. He had loved her. But he would never want her. 

Then she was gone, and he was hunting again, and everything happened at breakneck speed. Sam didn’t have time to think of anything beyond finding Dad and killing Yellow Eyes, and saving people, hunting things, keeping Dean alive. Dean never gave any indication that he remembered. Sam was grateful for that. 

When God finally sent the angel, it was not at all what Sam had expected. For one thing, he seemed uninterested in punishing Sam for his unruly cravings. For another, the angel himself was immediately something Sam craved, more than anything from his past. 

For the first time, Sam had to contend with an actual personification of his want. All his life, it had been guilty glances, faceless fantasies, curiosity, and nothing more. It wasn’t tangible until now. Any man he had found himself wanting in the past, he had immediately separated himself from. His gaze had lingered over Brady too long, and the fact that he had turned out to be a demon had only confirmed to Sam how wicked his temptation had been. He had redoubled his efforts after killing Brady’s demon, and had gone many, many weeks before giving in and touching himself again. 

And when he did, he found himself thinking of an angel. 

He hated himself, but oh how he loved Castiel. Lucifer and Michael had tormented him in the Cage about his infatuation. He could hide nothing from them. Michael had expressed disgust, not so much regarding the supposed gender of the object of Sam’s affection, but the weakness it caused in the hunter who had trapped the two most powerful beings in the universe. Lucifer had been more thoughtful in his games. He found Sam’s undeniable desire for an angel, especially the fallen rebel, hilarious. He accused Sam of truly wanting Lucifer himself, that he had only focused on Castiel because he had been determined not to give in to Lucifer. Then the psychological torture really began, and Sam’s scars were ripped open into fresh wounds. 

His year as a soulless hunter had been brutal and decadent. But even then, he had turned his lust on women. Sex too was brutal. He had cared nothing for the pleasure of the woman he was with, but had enjoyed the way they wanted him. And it fed his sexual needs without any danger of any emotional complications. It had been logical. It was better that way. 

That night he had threatened Castiel, it had come from a deeply buried part of him, a bitter, resentful part, which had turned his self-loathing into hate for Castiel for making Sam want him so much. Then the angel, his once and future friend, had stepped toward him and challenged him, calling him “boy” as if he knew how small Sam had always felt next to him…

The way Castiel had seemed so relieved to see him, had even moved to embrace him, had made Sam’s knees give out. The angel was so beautiful in that moment, so full of hope. They had muttered some nonsense about the awkwardness of a hug between them, but the truth was that Sam wanted to touch him right then so badly that it was like he had been slapped in the face hard enough to make his ears ring. The breaking of the wall had been that slap to the face all over again, and he had to focus on Dean in order to survive it. He couldn’t leave his brother alone out there. 

Losing Castiel then had brought on so many horrific emotions, so many mixed feelings, that he couldn’t process them. He had tried praying to Castiel, of course, but hadn’t known what to say. Little by little, he was losing his own mind, and little by little, Castiel was losing his control. The good heart of the angel he adored was corrupted by the Leviathan inside. Sam wanted to tell Castiel that he knew what it was like to be tainted from the inside, what with the demon blood and anger, but also with the forbidden desires and loneliness. It was why he couldn’t truly resent the angel’s actions, because he understood. 

The next year went by so quickly, and Sam’s mind lost its battle so completely, that he wasn’t at all sure what had happened in reality and what was a nightmare or hallucination. Years later, he still wouldn’t know. He could remember Dean’s strong voice grounding him, more than anything-“This conversation does not require a weapons discharge!”-and his soft voice soothing him-“I got you, little brother. Okay? We’re going to get through this, like we always do.” 

It was a lifetime since then. Castiel was lost, then found. He took on Sam’s pain, and was lost again. They battled together, and Sam lost everything. Dean and Castiel were gone, in a blink, atomized so far as Sam could tell, and it broke Sam’s mind as much as the felling of his wall had. 

Sam had been lost as surely as his brother. 

Amelia was a mistake. It was a way of punishing himself for every time he thought of the loss of Castiel differently than he thought of losing Dean. Try as he might, he would never be able to think of Castiel as a brother. Losing his brother was enough to rip his heart out. Losing the angel...it made him want to stomp on what was left of that heart. He had no right to ache for Castiel this way. He had failed his brother, and now he was failing him again by wanting that brother’s guardian so intensely. It was a betrayal to Dean. So he had convinced himself that Amelia was what he wanted. Amelia was beautiful, smart, and as jaded and broken as he was. He couldn’t hunt now. It hurt too badly. So he would settle with Amelia, in a scalding, bitter parody of the apple pie life he knew Dean wanted deep in his own heart. Dean couldn’t have it, and Sam didn’t want it, but Sam would force it to work, because his brother would never have another chance at it. He would live and love like Dean couldn’t. 

Some days he still missed the dog.


	3. Restless

They were between hunts. They were all grieving losses, but the three of them were still going strong, even when they didn’t want to. Wasn’t that always the way of it?

“How are you, Sam?”

He smiled into his whiskey. “Hey, Cas.”

The angel settled into a chair next to Sam with a sigh. “You’re weary,” he murmured. 

Sam snorted softly. “No rest for the wicked, man.”

Blue eyes turned to look at him. “You’re not wicked, Sam.”

He kept his own eyes on his glass, one of the Men of Letters’ crystal tumblers. He had drunk a few before Castiel had found him there, and now he wondered if it was either too much or not enough. “No? I’m past thirty years old, Cas. I lose track sometimes.”

“It’s difficult, what with the time in Hell and the deaths and revivals,” Castiel agreed with sympathy. 

A chuckle delayed his next sip. He finally turned to look at his old friend. “How old are you, Cas?”

A tiny smile lightened the angel’s features. “Very.” He reached for a tumbler at the center of the table, and helped himself to the whiskey. 

“Jimmy would probably be about my age. A little older, maybe.”

“A year or two Dean’s senior, I think.”

“Hm. What’s it like to look like you’re barely forty but know you’re older than everything around you?”

Castiel watched him for a moment, then took a breath. “I imagine it’s quite like being a past-thirty years old human who has seen more than any human ever has before. Even Methuselah has not seen what you have in all his long tenure.”

Sam looked up again. “You knew Methuselah?”

“I do.”

He blinked at the use of present tense, then shook his head. “I’ve seen a lot. A lot of really incredible things. A lot of horrible, incredible things. So I know wickedness when I see it.”

His friend’s eyes narrowed, and his head tipped slightly the way it did when Castiel was considering something carefully. “I think perhaps you’ve formed assumptions, which you are unable to revise, even with the wisdom afforded you by your age and vast experience.”

Sam blinked again. “What?” he responded stupidly. 

“Sam, if you still, after all this time, see something wicked in yourself, you haven’t been paying attention. At some point, one or all of us has allied with vampires, werewolves and demons. I even loved a demon for a time.”

He hoped his flinch wasn’t as pronounced as it felt. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I know.” He poured himself another two fingers of whiskey moodily. 

Those blue eyes were still watching him. “Wicked is as wicked does, Sam. And you may feel wicked, but that isn’t what you do. So that isn’t what you are.”

Without warning, tears filled his eyes. He cleared his throat, and swiped at them with his fingers. He shook his head. “No, Cas. Sometimes wickedness is just in what you want to do. You can live your whole life not doing it, but in the end, it’s still there, that want, and the shame of it just soaks every part of you. You don’t have to do wicked things to be a wicked person. And there’s no rest for someone like that, because he’s always fighting inside himself, against himself, against his own feelings. If he rests too long, maybe he’ll forget, slip up for an instant, and all the fighting will be for nothing. And he can’t let it be for nothing. Because it hurt the whole time, his whole life, and all that burning can’t be for nothing.”

It was a testament to the whiskey’s numbing quality that he barely felt Castiel’s hand on his own. But he gasped anyway, then sobbed in defeat. 

“I’m sorry, man. I’m in-in a weird mood, and I’m a little drunk…”

But Castiel did not take his hand away. “My point, Sam, was that all that fighting might be based on an assumption that something is wicked, when it really isn’t. And so it should never have been the enemy in the first place. Maybe what you fight against is more natural than you realize. This part of you that you try to burn away, is it something you would fight against if it were in another man?”

His throat was closing around his breath, but he pushed his words through. “I’m the true vessel of the Devil, Cas. It isn’t another man. It’s me. And that’s what makes it wrong.”

“You didn’t answer,” his friend pressed. 

Sam stared down at their hands through bitter tears. It felt as though his skin should burn Castiel, should make him flinch away in disgust. But the angel was steady as always. “No,” he choked out finally. “No, I wouldn’t blame another man for it.”

“Then why is it unacceptable inside you?”

“My whole life,” he groaned out. “I’ve fought it my whole life. I’m so tired, Cas.” The piece of his brain that still wanted to operate was in a blurred panic. What was he saying? What was he confessing? And to Castiel, of all people! It would all be for nothing if Castiel knew…

“Sam, what is it that you cannot accept about you?”

He shook his head. “No. Forget it, Cas. It isn’t...It’s not important.” He struggled to his feet. The burning was beginning to make it through the whiskey. He could feel the part of his skin that had taken the brunt of his fury as a child, the part he had held the fire against without mercy, determined to kill off this thing inside him. He cringed with remembering it. But he gritted his teeth and forced a strange, stubborn smile. “We deal with crap at a biblical level, Cas. We handle the end of the world every time it veers off its axis. Something like this, it doesn’t even register on the radar of importance.”

“You’re important, Sam.”

Now his bitter smile turned into a snarl. “Cas, stop. Thank you. I appreciate what you’re saying, but...but you don’t know what I’m talking about. You don’t understand. Save it for Dean. He’s got real issues. The world has real problems. This is something I’ve been dealing with alone for-“

“Your whole life,” Castiel sighed. “Sam, you don’t have to be so alone.”

His breath was coming too fast, and he was terrified that tears would begin again. “Yeah, Cas. I do. And that’s the whole point. I need to be alone. I want to be...I want to be alone...I want…”

Castiel was holding him before Sam had even realized he had moved. He tried to push the angel away, but his body was as disobedient as ever, and it clung to his friend instead. “It’s all right, Sam. It really is all right.”

“Why aren’t you disgusted by me?” he hissed over Castiel’s shoulder. “Do you know? If you know, how can you stand to touch me?” 

The deep voice was soothing, comforting, and wrong in the extreme. “Sam, I’ve spoken to Dean. About you.”

At last, he succeeded in pushing Castiel’s chest away from his own. “No!” he cried. “No! He wouldn’t have told you! He’s forgotten, and anyway...anyway…”

A deep sadness shone in his old friend’s face. “Sam, he didn’t tell me. That is...he hadn’t. I brought it up. I asked him. And he told me…”

Sam backed away angrily. The nausea and fear was strangling him. He felt betrayed at his deepest, most intimate layer. “He told you I’m gay!” he snapped. “He told you I never stopped being the freak. He told you I’m a fraud. Well, good! I’m glad he told you! Everyone can stop pretending now! I hated it silently my whole life. Now I can hate it out loud. No, don’t touch me! Don’t look at me! I can’t look at you. I can’t…” He sobbed hard, and continued to back away. “Looking at you makes my skin burn! Don’t you get that? It always has! It’s disgusting and I can’t make it stop, so just leave me alone!”

“Sam! Why is it disgusting? Why-“

“Because it’s me! Because everything about me...I’m not clean, Castiel! You know that! Better than anybody but Dean, you know! And Dean loves me, and I’ve hidden this part of me so well that he doesn’t have to see it, but you see it. Like a demon’s true face, you can see this when you look at me, now that you know. Just leave me alone, Castiel!”

A third voice made Sam startle severely, nearly knocking him off his feet. “I didn’t tell him you’re gay, Sam.”

He looked from his brother’s sad eyes to Castiel’s, and back again. “What?”

Dean looked down at his own feet, and he shrugged, slipping his hands into his pockets. “That’s not what he asked.”

Castiel was searching his face, seeking Sam’s permission for something. “I asked if he thought...if he thought you could love me.”

Sam felt cornered. The two people who meant everything to him, they were cornering him. He would have rather faced Bloody Mary in a mirror than his own reflection just then. Nothing made sense, and he just wanted to curl away from this humiliation. “What are you talking about?” It was a breathless hiss, but it was the best he could do.

Castiel glanced back at Dean, as if gathering courage to him. Then he turned to Sam with renewed determination. “I asked your brother if he thought there was a chance that you could love me. And he said he didn’t know.”

A thousand thoughts scattered through his whiskey head in a moment.

Dean took a breath then. “Sammy, I said I didn’t know. Because I know you’re in love with the guy, have been all this time, but I didn’t know if you could let yourself love him. Because you hate that you love him so much. Look, man. I get what it’s like…I know how you can look in a mirror and hate what you see.”

A pitiful laugh spilled out. How could Dean always read his mind, especially when he tried so hard to be unreadable?

“I know, man. I got my own issues, right? But this thing you do to yourself, it’s pathological, okay? And it isn’t right. And it’s going to keep you from something you’ve wanted for your whole life because...I don’t know, because you’re afraid. Because you can look the Devil in the eye and say no, but you can’t look at yourself and say it’s okay.”

“It’s not supposed to be this way!” Sam moaned out. 

“It’s the way it is, Sam. Hating yourself for it hasn’t made it go away. Letting Cas love you for it can’t be worse than what you’ve done to yourself all this time. And it never mattered to me. I even tried teasing you about it a few times over the years, because I thought it might make it something we could talk about. Maybe I made it worse, I don’t know. But I never meant to. I just meant for you to see it wasn’t going to change anything between you and me, that we’re always gonna be what we are, no matter what you let yourself be. Guess I didn’t know how to say that, but I’m saying it now. There’s nothing wrong with you, Sam. And I wish you’d let somebody love you before we run out of time.” Dean shrugged again, and then turned to wander back the way he had come. 

“Dean,” he choked, but it was barely a sound by the time it left his lips, and his brother didn’t hear it. And he and Castiel were alone again. Even the whiskey was abandoning him, little by little. He turned to Castiel and lifted his palms in a wild, frightened gesture to let him know he didn’t know what to do. 

Castiel smiled grimly at him. “Dean tried to explain how deep this goes. I didn’t understand till now. I’m so sorry, Sam. I can heal you, but I can’t fix what you’ve done to yourself.”

“Make it go away!” Sam pleaded hoarsely. “Now that you know, help me fix it!”

His friend shook his head. “Sam, it’s not broken.”

At last, Sam let the sobs and burns drop him to his knees, and he shook with them, and he felt strong arms encircle him, and he hated how much he wanted them to never let him go.


	4. Surface

It took months before they came close to getting it right. And even once they seemed to, it would be much longer before it was right every time. There were tears, for both of them, and words shouted in frustration, whispered in desperation. But Castiel was steady, and Sam was strong, and they learned to express what was inside their heads and hidden beneath layers of skin, until it was mostly easy to understand one another. Hunts disrupted their progress, and if Castiel was away for too long, he came back to find that Sam has regressed in his acceptance of himself and his own nature.

For the most part, Dean stayed out of the way, and murmured simple words of support when one of them needed him to, but it was clear that Sam hadn’t just scarred himself as a youth, but Dean too. The older brother was afraid to speak up, afraid of pushing Sam away. His ears still rang with Sam’s promises to never forgive him, and he was hesitant to speak at all on the topic of Sam’s love life, unless it was to tease very superficially.

Sam often made love frantically, as though Castiel would change his mind if he didn’t hurry. As if Sam might change his own mind. He had tried for years to not be attracted to their angel companion; he certainly couldn’t stop now. But he could talk himself out of acting upon it, and that wasn’t fair to Castiel. Mixed signals made for very confused, sometimes hurt, angels. So he came at every encounter with false determination and phony confidence, reminiscent of his time without a soul, and just that comparison made him weep after.

“Sam?” a very deep voice muttered softly. “Are you all right?”

He stared up at the blurry ceiling through his tears. “Soulless,” he groaned back.

There was still silence while his lover tried to fit that word into what they had just done. Then he turned to place a hand on Sam’s forehead. “What do you mean?”

Sam laughed bitterly. “Are you checking?”

Castiel hesitated again, then lifted his hand. “What? No. I’m simply…”

“I was just thinking of how I make love to you. That it isn’t making love. It’s screwing, the way I did when I was soulless. Like a panic.”

His angel nodded, and his gaze didn’t meet Sam’s. “Am I doing something that...isn’t correct?”

A wave of love flowed over him, and he smiled. His hand reached up to run through dark hair. He loved the way Castiel’s worried eyes softened as he did so. “No. No, you’re perfect, Cas. Everything you do is perfect.”

Relief tinged Castiel’s small chuckle. “We both know that’s not true.”

Sam’s own smile widened. “Cas, even your mistakes are perfect, and I love them. I promise.” The smile slipped away then. “No, it’s me. I realized just then that I treat you no better than I ever treated any partner while I was soulless. And that’s why I was crying. Because I hate that about me. The way I act, the way I take from you like you mean nothing, even though you mean more to me than any lover ever has. You’re...you’re a lover, Cas. The only one who ever could have been that for me was Jess, and I couldn’t make myself...And that was ten years ago. More. I never could have gotten with her where I am with you, because loving her never made me attracted to her. With you, it’s both, and yet, I still treat every time like I’m getting away with something wicked. I didn’t realize...I’m so sorry, Cas.”

The blue gaze bore into his relentlessly. “You’re still hurting when we have sex, Sam. Aren’t you?”

Humiliation flooded up his throat, and he was afraid for a moment that he was going to throw up. But he shook his head and tried to smile. “There’s nothing you can do, Cas. It’s psychological.”

“I can heal some-“

“You can’t heal this,” he sighed. “I burned into a few layers of skin, but that’s nothing compared to how deep this goes. Dean was right when he said it was pathological. I obsessed like you wouldn’t believe. Any thoughts, any desire, I immediately burned it out. I was ruthless. It’s probably a good thing it was Dean and not me who studied with Alistair. I tried to cut this out of me, Cas, and sometimes I still want to. So the fact that it feels good just makes everything so much worse.”

“The feeling good is the part that reminds you of the burning.”

“Yeah,” he choked out. “Yeah. I trained myself to not feel good. How fucked up is that?”

Castiel was silent.

“I trained myself to not feel good. And I did it so well that it hurts every time my lover touches me. And yet that’s all I want in the world. Your touch.” He sat up fully, and glanced around the spartan room. “I might have to throw up,” he added miserably.

The angel lifted himself too. He sought out the trash can to place it nearer to Sam, then lay back down. “I don’t know what else I can do,” he admitted finally.

“There isn’t anything. Just please don’t leave. Okay? Just please don’t leave me. I’m trying.”

Sad eyes turned to stare at him again. “Sam? Is any of it worth it? I can love you without touching you. I’d miss it, but I don’t need it. I can love you without even being near you. Sam...would you have me love you from a distance? Would that help? You ask me not to leave you, but I sense your relief when I do. It hurts. Terribly. But if it helps you-“

“No! Please. Cas, please. When you leave, it’s all worse.”

“How can…” He sighed in frustration. “How can it be worse, Sam? You just said that making love to me reminded you of your time without a soul. That-that it’s more of a panic than making love. And I don’t think you only meant sex. I think you just mean being with me.”

“Cas, no!”

“Sam, can you imagine what it feels like knowing that bringing you pleasure makes you hate yourself? That nothing I do can simply make you happy? I was so upset a few weeks ago that Dean had to do what he called ‘talking me off a ledge.’ I wasn’t on any precipice, but it was easy to see where the metaphor comes from. I don’t know what else I can do.”

Sam swallowed hard. “Let...” His brain whirred frantically. “Let me keep trying. Please. It’s not so bad as it was.”

Castiel stood away from their bed, and gestured to himself unhappily. “You are disgusted by what we do, Sam. You’re attracted to my vessel-to my body. I know you are, because that’s part of your problem. So the body isn’t what disgusts you.”

“No,” he moaned. He leaned his weight against the headboard and closed his eyes against the naked beauty before them. No, it wasn’t the body. It was the thousands of overwhelming thoughts and cravings that body elicited from Sam that disgusted him. He had thought one of the problems would be the fact that Jimmy Novak had once occupied that body. But that had actually been easy to overcome. Sam Winchester knew better than anyone how a possessing force worked. And the original tenant had left the building, so it was all Castiel. So that wasn’t it. It wasn’t the body.

“It’s not the body,” Castiel said again. “So it must be me. The things you hate yourself for are the things I embrace. And that disgusts you. I am what you tried so hard not to be.”

“No,” he croaked again. “Cas, no. It’s different when it’s you! You’re not even human, man! You’re genderless. You said that before.”

“And Dean insists that finding a female vessel for you is a step in the wrong direction, and I agree, but I’m offering it now.”

The words were spoken so quickly, and with such intensity, that Sam couldn’t follow them immediately. When he did, he let his eyes snap open. “What?”

Castiel’s tears slipped down his cheeks in streams. “This vessel is part of me, of who I am, because of what I’ve been through with it. But if it could somehow help you feel pleasure from our contact instead of pain and nausea...I’ll leave it behind. Give this body the hunter’s burial it has more than earned and…I never thought I’d ever say this again, but...I’d seek out another. Perhaps-perhaps someone near reaping, so-so I could get permission, but then occupy it alone, and...It would need to be someone without family. And someone you found attractive to you…”

His heart was wrenching from his chest. “You would do that? Go through all that for me?”

Castiel took a deep breath, and nodded. He lowered himself to sit beside Sam again on the bed. “Yes. Yes, I would do that. It’s more complicated to take a vessel now than it was before, since this is not just a vessel but my body. It was mine when I was mostly human. And...and it was mine when we first began making love. But if it meant I could connect with you without causing you such discomfort...Yes, Sam.” He closed his eyes briefly, then moved to stand again. “I’ll begin seeking out someone now.”

Sam caught his arm. “No! No, you don’t need to do that. Cas, the whole reason it hurts is because this is the body I want, with you in it.”

“I know. But if it were a female form, perhaps...The same desire wouldn’t be there, maybe, but neither would the fear. The pain, I mean.”

Fear. Sam licked his lips, and frowned down at his hand still holding Castiel’s arm. His heart pounded in his ears. “Fear,” he repeated softly.

“I don’t mean-“

“No, you’re right. Wait, Cas. You’re right about that.”

He watched Sam.

“It’s not the desire that is linked to feeling the pain. That’s what I tried to link all those years ago, but that isn’t what happened.” He sat up straighter, and forced himself to look into his lover’s eyes. “It’s the fear. It’s always been about being afraid.”

Hope radiated from Castiel’s whole body then, the body Sam loved so much. “What does this mean?”

“Cas, I only get sick when I’m afraid of how much I want you. And it only hurts when I’m afraid of losing it. It’s the panic I talked about, the way I’m so afraid one of us is going to change his mind, one of us is going to talk himself out of it.”

“How can I help?”

A small smile came over him. “Please. I can do this. Okay? I’ve tried my whole life to make myself afraid of wanting a man. But I’m not going to spend the rest of my life afraid of wanting you. You’re willing to give up everything just so I don’t feel afraid when we touch. I’m Sam fucking Winchester, man. I’ll learn not to be afraid of what we are. So I can love you right. Give me some more time, okay? I can do this.”

Castiel nodded, his eyes full of tears but also devotion. “Yes, Sam. But how?”

“What’s the first step in any hunt?”

“Figure out what you’re dealing with,” the adopted Winchester recited.

“Exactly. I know what the enemy is now, what it’s always been. It isn’t about loving a man. It’s about being afraid of that.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is I can get past one, and I don’t need to get past the other. I can love you, Cas. Just give me time to hunt this other part of me, the part I should have been hunting all along. You’ve told me all this time that loving a man isn’t unnatural, isn’t wicked. It isn’t wrong to want you. But I’m still afraid, and I will not let my fear keep me from loving you the way you deserve to be loved. The monster is in still me, Cas, but it isn’t what I thought it was. Now that I’ve figured out what I’m dealing with, I can fight it. Just give me time.”

Blue eyes blinked. “I’m...not sure I understand. But, Sam, if you want me, if you want this, I’ll give you any time you need. I’m very old, Sam. I can be patient. And I love you with every part of me.”

Sam felt a bit of euphoria stemming from his revelation. Why had it taken so long to understand? It was all ringing true in his head now, and it seemed so obvious now that he was on the right path. “And I love every part of who you are. That’s okay, and I know it. I’ve always known it, but I was never willing to accept it. Hating me isn’t going to keep me from loving you, not from now on. I promise. I love you too much to want to keep hating me forever. I’m still terrified, but now I know that’s what hurts when we’re together, and I’m not going to let that win.”

Castiel’s gaze was replete with affection. He took both of Sam’s hands in his own. “You’re Sam fucking Winchester.”

He burst into laughter, and leaned in to kiss Castiel’s lips softly. “Yeah. I am. It’ll take some time, Cas, but I’m Sam Winchester, and fear was never enough to keep me from doing right by those I love.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are cookies for writers. It’s true. 
> 
> ~Posing


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